


The Terrace in the Afternoon

by alicekittridge



Series: This Is Where I Leave You [1]
Category: The Last of Us
Genre: F/F, Flash Fic, POV First Person, Past Tense, Slice of Life, Some angst, lots of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-23
Updated: 2020-06-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:28:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24872296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alicekittridge/pseuds/alicekittridge
Summary: "Who's more foolish? The fool or the fool that follows her?"
Relationships: Dina/Ellie (The Last of Us)
Series: This Is Where I Leave You [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1829836
Comments: 3
Kudos: 66





	The Terrace in the Afternoon

**Author's Note:**

> I've only played up until this point in the game and was feeling rather inspired, and so this came out. Just popping into a fandom I've never written for to post it, and I hope you all like it, despite this work being told in the forbidden POV xx  
> \--  
> Content warning: Just language (as expected)

**W** E DECIDED TO stay in the theatre for a day. Hole up like greedy assholes and count our blessings. It was the morning after our big moment. The rain was icy and relentless, a thousand little drums tap-tap-tapping on the roof, coloring the silence between Dina and I as she frowned and fiddled with the radio. I could feel the weight of our burdens between us, this new, heavy thing; how we’d both trusted each other but not wholly. But one could hide the fact that they were immune until they were lying on their deathbed. Pregnancy would show whether the mother willed it to or not. I was angry for her unwillingness to disclose her condition to me. I was certain she felt the same about mine. _Love fifteen on both sides._

Yet for all my anger and confusion, there still was a swell of tenderness. It pitched my heart inside my chest every time the crease between her brows deepened, or when a strand of dark hair fell from her ponytail and she tucked it behind her ear. I wanted to lean and kiss away her visible frustration, but the moment wasn’t right. _One step forward, two steps back._

She sighed, eventually, and tossed the tiny screwdriver onto the dusty wool rug. “Fuck this thing,” she said. “Finnicky shit.”

“Don’t ask me to lend a hand,” I said.

“You’re the opposite of delicate, Ellie.” She stood with effort.

“Where you goin’?”

“The terrace. I just,” she added, before I could object, “need a breather. It’s stuffy as hell in here.”

“Be careful,” I said quietly.

Her face fell into a tender expression. “Always.”

In the time she was gone, I studied her handiwork. The radio seemed almost fixed, though I knew its outside looks were deceiving. Something on its inside was broken. It would take digging and tinkering to properly fix it. A kind of patience and delicacy I didn’t have. I left the radio where it was.

I retraced my steps from the night before, weaving in and out of rooms I’d already checked, testing barricades, possible entrances, finding nothing disturbed. They were still relics of a time before me, of life that had happened before hell and after. I had stopped letting myself wonder about all the lives that’d travelled through a place long ago, had trained myself not to, but when you’re alone and surrounded by the evidence, it’s impossible not to think of the ghosts. What movies played here. What they ate. Which ones were the stereotypical people in the dark back with their hands wandering. Who came wandering in after shit hit the fan. If the film—or play—advertised on the outside was the last good thing anybody ever saw.

No one would know. All the people who’d lived here were either dead, infected, or spread out across the country. They could’ve become scavengers. Or Fireflies. Or WLF. Something completely different.

Figuring enough time had passed, I crept to the room where the terrace was. The window was open. Rain was soaking the carpet. The wrought iron was rusted in places, yet sturdy enough to remain and hold two people. Dina sat to the left, back against the railing, legs outstretched. Hadn’t even bothered to put up her hood. I was soaked in seconds.

“You’ll catch a cold,” she said. “Or are you immune to those too?”

“I wish.”

“It’d be awfully convenient.”

“It would.” A pause. “Dina.”

“Hmm?”

“I was an asshole.”

She nodded. “You were.”

I propped my chin on my knees. “You’re not a burden. I hated those words the moment I said them.”

“Why did you, then?”

“I was angry you didn’t trust me.”

“It goes both ways,” Dina said. She turned to me. “Looks like we’re both guilty of failing the first exercise.”

Thunder rumbled in the distance, followed by a streak of white-purple lightning crawling across a dark expanse of clouds.

“Have you thought of a name yet?” I said.

She scoffed. Then smiled. “Sick As A Bitch.”

“It’s perfect.”

“Right now it is.” Her smile faded. “I don’t know, Ellie. You always tell me I’m levelheaded and I feel so scrambled. Do I keep it? Do I not?”

I set a hand on her knee. Scooted closer to her. We both shivered in the rain. “Don’t think of it,” I murmured. “Think of this moment.”

Her head fell onto my shoulder. Her hair smelled like rain and dirt and blood and everything familiar. Everything that grounded me.

“It would rain like this in New Mexico,” Dina said. “It wasn’t this fucking green—just the opposite, in some places. But it would rain intensely for a few hours, or overnight, and then the next day it was like it never happened. Except you could smell the dampness.”

I tried to imagine it, the stretches of desert and its vegetation, the desert storms. “Did you like it there?” I asked.

“Well enough.” A pause. “I like here a lot better.”

I shrugged my shoulder, unsettling her head. “You cheesedick.”

“You fucking like my lines.”

“When they’re good.”

The drops were getting bigger. The light was shifting into its late afternoon haze. We didn’t move just yet, despite being aware we should. Dina said, “Who do you think the show _Cassandra_ is about?”

“Well…” I said, “…Cassandra was a figure from Greek mythology. She prophesized the future, but no one believed her, and so when tragedy struck, it left everyone devastated.” I shrugged. “That’s my best guess.”

“A college guess.”

“Please. It doesn’t exist anymore.” I made to get up. “Shall we?”

“Yeah.”

She accepted my hand.

“If I get sick,” I said, helping her through the window, “I’m blaming it all on you.”

“Who’s more foolish?” Dina countered, smiling. “The fool or the fool that follows her?”

“That makes two of us.”

**—**

**Author's Note:**

> I was very happy when my home state was mentioned in a AAA game!
> 
> Thank you for reading xx


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